Five Times Hakuryuu Screamed Judal's Name and One Time He Was Silent
by Kaen Okami
Summary: Even if he didn't realize it himself, Hakuryuu always thought that Judal would never leave his side, until the day that one disappears from the other forever. Spoilers for Chapter 260.


**1.**

In hindsight, Hakuryuu thought as he made what must have been his fifth circle around the peach tree section of the royal orchard, agreeing to play hide-and-seek with a person he knew full well was sneaky and had no misgivings about cheating was probably not a wise decision. But six-year-olds were not known for their great powers of decision-making. Nor were they known for their ample reserves of patience, and Hakuryuu's was running quite low. He was tired of wandering around in a bunch of stupid peach trees, tired of looking behind them to find only empty space, and tired of losing to Judal.

"Judal!" he started to call for his friend. "Where _are _you?"

Only silence answered him, but he got the distinct feeling that somewhere, he was being laughed at.

"Come on, at least give me a hint!"

That earned him a more clear-cut answer: a small orange thing suddenly exploding at his feet, covering his shoes in pulp. He whipped around to see where it had been thrown from and saw the person he'd been looking for standing on a tree branch, smirking and tossing another overripe peach in the air and catching it again. Judal snickered at the look of outrage on the younger boy's face. "What? You _told_ me to give you a hint."

"I didn't mean throw peaches at me!"

"Then you should have been more specific."

Hakuryuu clenched his fists. "It doesn't matter! I found you, so now you have to look for me!"

"Nuh-uh," Judal said, shaking his head. "You've got to tag me first!" And with that, the Magi took off through the tree branches, much too fast for Hakuryuu to keep up with on foot.

"Hey!" Nevertheless, the young prince gave chase, shouting after his thoroughly vexing playmate. "No fair using Gravity Magic! Come back here! _Judal!"_

**2\. **

When Kouen had spent a good quarter of an hour plotting out the rare free day he and Hakuei were to spend together, nowhere in those plans had he accounted for a brash, long-haired Magi to jump in through the princess' bedroom window unannounced during what had been a very peaceful game of shogi, carrying a suspicious-looking canister in his hand.

"Can we help you, Judal-kun?" Hakuei asked, confused but still polite as ever, while Kouen glared at him from behind her.

Judal's grin looked to be in danger of splitting his face. "Not really. I just need a place to hide for a little while. Your little brother's about to be on the warpath."

"Hakuryuu? Why would he - ?"

She was cut off by a strangled yell from the other end of the hallway, and Kouen's glare intensified. "Judal-kun, what did you do?" he demanded to know.

Judal shrugged. "Oh, nothing much. I just thought Hakuryuu's room was way too drab for a kid like him, so I did him a favor and brightened it up a bit," he explained, shaking the canister in his hand. Before Kouen could ask him what was in it, they heard a door loudly slam open, the rapid footsteps of a prince whose shock had given way to fury, and said prince's hunting cry resounding in the corridor:

"JUUUUUUU-DAAAAAAAAL!"

"Ah, crap, he's coming this way," said Judal, ducking back out of the window to find a better refuge. "Hey, if he asks, I was never here, okay?"

No sooner had Judal begun roofhopping away than Hakuei's door slammed open too. Standing in the doorway, looking thoroughly incensed, was Hakuryuu, and neither his sister nor his cousin could keep their eyes from widening at the sight of him. Every inch of his normally impeccably clean clothes - and much of his face - had been daubed with paint of garishly bright colors, in words and designs that had absolutely no place in polite society, and the fact that Hakuryuu looked slightly crazed certainly didn't help the look.

"_Where," _he hissed, gesturing to himself as if they wouldn't have noticed otherwise. _"Is. Judal?!"_

"Did he do that...to your room too?" Hakuei asked hesitantly.

"My whole room. My whole closet. _Where is he?!"_ Hakuryuu growled again. Without a word, both Hakuei and Kouen pointed to the window. When the prince looked, he caught sight of a long black braid fluttering in the breeze, and immediately charged after its owner, leaping out the window with murder in his eyes.

"Judal! When I get my hands on you, I'm going to cut off your braid and _hang you on it!"_

"No! Don't cut off my braid!"

As her brother and his target ran out of sight, still howling at each other, Hakuei smiled. "You know, at first I wasn't sure what to think when I found out about their relationship," she told Kouen. "But I think it's kind of cute when they flirt."

If the first sentence hadn't thrown him for a loop, the second one definitely did, and Kouen could only stare openly at the princess. _You call that _flirting?!

**3\. **

"Stop avoiding my questions! How did this happen to him? What have you been _doing _to him when I'm not here?"

Anyone who didn't know better would have missed it when Gyokuen's lips curled into a sneer for the briefest of seconds before reverting back to her default false smile. "We haven't been doing a thing to him, Hakuryuu," she said (_lied)_ sweetly. Her eyes stayed locked onto his face while she reached down and purposefully ran her hand over the unconscious Judal's bare neck and chest, and a wordless shriek of outrage filled Hakuryuu's mind. She was still talking, and he had to struggle to listen. "Judal has been working very hard on improving his magic, you see. He merely fainted out of exhaustion, and this is just a sign that we'll need to monitor him more closely to ensure that he doesn't hurt himself, during your sparring matches or anyplace else."

"See that you do," Hakuryuu hissed. "He passed out when he was thirty feet in the air. If I hadn't caught him, he could have been killed. And before he went completely unconscious, I heard him muttering something about the rukh in his head. What did he mean by that?"

"Judal is a Magi," Gyokuen said smoothly. "And he is more aware of the rukh's activity than any of us can ever hope to be. He likely noticed the ones closest to him, or believed that he noticed them, doing something unusual. It's nothing to worry yourself about, I assure you."

Hakuryuu resisted the urge to laugh out loud, coldly and bitterly, at those words. She couldn't have told a more obvious lie if she'd tried. "I can't accept that. Something else is going on here. I just haven't figured out what it is yet."

She had no problem laughing at his words, as if they were the mere babbling of a foolish child. "If you say so, Hakuryuu. Why don't you go think about it while I take care of Judal?"

He debated not obeying the clear dismissal, but he didn't see how it would do any good. For now, all he could do was retreat, and try to puzzle out what this witch and her organization were up to. "I'm going to talk to Judal when he wakes up," he warned over his shoulder as he left the room. "And I'm going to ask him what's been happening to him. If you won't tell me, he will."

"Very well, dear," said Gyokuen as her son rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. She entertained the idea of forcing Judal to keep quiet about what he was currently undergoing at al-Thamen's hands, but decided that it didn't matter. Even if Judal told Hakuryuu everything, there was nothing he nor the ineffectual young prince could do about it. They were both smart enough to know the consequences of running their mouths off and causing problems for her organization; Hakuryuu had seen them firsthand, would bear their mark on his face forever.

A soft groan from the table behind her made her turn. Judal was stirring, his eyes slowly opening a fraction. His lips moved: "Ha...Haku...ryuu..."

Gyokuen smiled, and laid a gentle hand on the Magi's forehead. "You're finally awake, Judal. Tell me, what's the last thing you remember?"

"H-Hakuryuu..." he murmured again, staring dazedly up at the ceiling. "I...My head...was all light and I...I was falling, he...was screaming... 'Judal.' For...for me."

"I see."

Judal's fingers twitched. "He was...calling..." With some effort, he lifted one shaking arm up, as if reaching for something...Or someone, Gyokuen supposed would be more accurate. "Hakuryuu...Hakuryuu..."

That was quite enough of that for now, Gyokuen decided, and she reached out to push down on a pressure point in the boy's neck. With one final murmur of "Haku...ryuu..." his eyes closed, his arm dropped down onto the table, and he fell silent, unconscious once more.

His breathing was relatively steady, but his face was still restless, and she could feel the rukh buzzing around him, equally agitated. She supposed she should have expected that - clearly the will of Solomon was not responding well to the intrusion of the will of Ill Ilah. Well, let it be agitated. It wasn't as if it would do anything to derail the forced conversion.

Without taking her eyes off the young Magi, Gyokuen waved forward two of her veiled attendants, deciding it was time to let them take over for the time being. "Look after Judal and inform me immediately when he awakens again. Forcing his fall into depravity seems to have had some unforeseen physical consequences on him, and we will need to intensify his training so that his body can keep up with the treatments. It would be careless of us to lose our prized Magi so early on, would it not?"

**4\. **

Judal always loved it when Hakuryuu decided that they could afford to take a break from training and testing the limits of their newfound powers to enjoy themselves.

The Magi's bare back pressed against the thick crimson covers of the emperor's bed - his and Hakuryuu's bed now, he supposed he should start thinking of it. He squeezed his eyes shut and held onto his king's slender hips tightly as the younger boy thrusted into him again, the bed creaking and groaning in protest when he did. The thought crossed Judal's mind that they should go easier for fear of breaking the thing, but it was immediately dismissed as stupid and irrelevant, as reason was washed away by the pure euphoria coursing through his body. It hadn't been long since he and Hakuryuu had reached this stage of their relationship (as his king so properly put it), but damn if the boy hadn't gotten really good at this, really fast. Speaking of which...

"Faster...Come on, you holding out on me or something?"

"Like hell," growled Hakuryuu in Judal's ear. He was using his _don't-goad-me _voice, but redoubled his efforts all the same, eliciting a moan from his Magi.

"Ah - _Hakuryuu!" _Judal couldn't stop himself from crying out as his king pushed up inside him, hard and fast and oh _so _good, and by chance (Hakuryuu hadn't quite learned how to get it every time) hit just the right _spot, _making his back arch up.

Hakuryuu hissed between clenched teeth, feeling Judal tighten around him, and dug his nails into the Magi's shoulders. "Judal..." By now the Magi knew what it meant when Hakuryuu began to moan his name: he was close. They were both so, so agonizingly close. _"Judal..." _

Outside of battle, Judal's heart never beat more rapidly, his breath never came in shorter, quicker pants, than at times like this. He lived for this kind of ecstasy. Hakuryuu rocked his hips in _just _the right way, and for a moment Judal's mind went blank, only vaguely aware that he had climaxed, was spilling out onto the bedsheets. (Never mind it, they could be replaced).

"_Judal!" _Hakuryuu screamed as he came as well, gripping Judal's shoulders so hard that the Magi was certain that there would be bruises there later. In a second, however, he relaxed, all the tension flowing out of his body as he lay across Judal's, his head resting beside his partner's on the pillow.

It took a minute for the high to die down in both of them, for them to breathe steadily again. Judal was the first to break the stillness and silence, looping his arms around Hakuryuu's shoulders and adjusting himself under his weight to more easily pull his king down for a kiss. Hakuryuu returned it eagerly, and that eagerness excited Judal in a whole different way. He remembered their fight with Gyokuen. He didn't like to, but he remembered how he had watched, equal parts shocked and horrified, as that damned witch pinned down and forced a kiss on her own son. He remembered the revulsion and utter loathing in Hakuryuu's eyes at the act, and his own inability to resist it.

After that fight, Judal had sworn on his life he was never going to let anyone do such a thing to Hakuryuu again, and that from then on his would be the only intimate touch that his king would ever feel.

So he took each chance he could get to plant a kiss on Hakuryuu's lips, and run his hands over every inch of his bare skin as he was being permitted to do right now, to make absolutely sure that the feeling of _his _hands and _his _lips would wipe out the feeling of hers forever. No one but Judal would know what it felt like to be with Hakuryuu, the Magi reasoned, once he had marked his king as his own.

**5\. **

"_Ramz Al-Salos!"_

Hakuryuu just got quicker and quicker with each training session, Judal reflected as the young emperor nimbly dodged the lightning spears shot at him. He remembered when Hakuryuu had possessed no djinn, only a _guan dao _and his own harshly trained body, and all he'd had to do to tip the fight in his favor was use Gravity Magic the whole time and laugh from midair at the boy on the ground, who was usually yelling at him to _get back down here and fight fair, damn it!_

Ever since Hakuryuu had joined the ranks of the Ren family dungeon capturers, the playing field had been evened up quite a bit.

"_Zaug Mobarezo!"_

It was easy for Judal to float deftly out of the way of the wooden dragons that come roaring up into the air at him from Hakuryuu's wooden arm, and while avoiding their snapping jaws he took the opportunity to admire his king in his full Djinn Equip. He'd been badgering the boy for years to go out and capture a dungeon, to claim its power as his own, and in Judal's professional opinion no other Dungeon Capturer was as interesting or as impressive a sight as his king was. Certainly not, he reminded himself, since with Belial he had become one of only three warriors in the whole world who had managed to capture more than one dungeon, and with his most recent training he was well on his way to being able to handily defeat both of the others.

But that could come later, Judal thought, both the training and the victories. Though Hakuryuu insisted that sparring with Judal was merely another training exercise, it had become such a routine and, more importantly, enjoyable practice for the two of them that if you asked Judal, it hardly counted as just training any more. He wondered, as he shot down through the air to evade two dragons coming at him from either side, if Hakuryuu felt the same way. He'd just have to see.

"Thalg Al-Salos!"

He expected Hakuryuu to dart away from the giant ice shards, or to summon more plant creatures to destroy them. His king did neither, opting to take a third option and _leap, _propelling himself off of the damn things and at Judal before they hit the ground. It didn't provide him with much leverage, but with the help of his wooden serpents, the unusually short distance between the two of them, and the fact that he'd caught the Magi completely off guard, it became ridiculously easy for Hakuryuu to get up close and whack his partner with the flat end of Zagan's spear.

Which he did unnecessarily hard, in Judal's opinion, with an exhilarated grin splitting his face that the Magi found both irritating and beautiful.

The wind was knocked out of him and it happened so fast that for a moment he wasn't sure what was going on as he plummeted downward, but Judal still had the wherewithal to reactivate his Gravity Magic and swoop back up into the air an instant before he hit the ground. As he did, he felt something rough brush his bare arm, and he looked down to see that a thick mass of vines had sprung up exactly where there had been about to be a Judal-shaped hole in the stone courtyard, that would have perfectly cushioned his fall if he hadn't flown away. It was obvious where they had come from, and Judal laughed.

"So you won't let me get hurt, Hakuryuu? I appreciate the thought, but I can handle a little fall, you know!"

A smile pulled at the corner of Hakuryuu's mouth, as he stood atop a pillar of twisted wood. "As can I. That doesn't mean either of us want it to happen. As your chosen king, I have to protect my loyal partner, don't I?"

Never in a million years would Judal admit that he was touched by this admission. "You just worry about yourself! It's the Magi's job to look after their king, after all. And!" He pointed his wand emphatically at Hakuryuu. "Don't think that one little hit means you're stronger than me! I can still win!"

Hakuryuu's smile turned to a smirk. _"I'm _not the one implying that you can't."

Oh, it was _on _now. "Ha! See if your dragons can beat mine! _Thalg Thalgeyya!"_

His king's smirk only broadened at being faced with tornadoes of icy wind, happy to test his strength against them. "We'll see! Show me your strength, Judal!"

~0~

"_...Judal-kun can never return to this world, ever again."_

"_That's...Such screwed up magic...In that case, I'll make you dispel that magic!"_

"_It's no use...This magic will never disappear. This is magic that rewrites the world's laws. The moment it is unleashed, I can't do anything about it any more."_

"_...Don't lie to me, he's...!"_

Aladdin was still talking, but Hakuryuu wasn't listening anymore, hearing only static in his ears. His mind was going blank, his body numb, and he felt himself fall to his knees, bent over by the force of that realization. The burned stumps flared in protest, but he barely felt it. His arm...His legs...What did they matter? What did he care if he lost them all? His body could be restored through Zagan's magic. But his Magi...His Judal...

_I never imagined this would happen. _Hakuryuu stared at the ground, the images of what had just occurred replaying in his head. _I tried to pull you back, _he thought despairingly. _But I couldn't. I'm too weak...I let this happen...I failed you..._

Part of him registered that Aladdin was now trying to rouse what was left of his own king candidate. "Alibaba-kun? Hey, Alibaba-kun?"

"He's gone," Hakuryuu heard himself murmur. "Just like him..."

He stared up at the sky, at the hole in the clouds Judal had been pushed through, as if any minute now his partner would descend back down, laughing at the idea that he could be kept away from this world. Another realization hit him - he was completely alone now. He _needed _Judal, had needed him from the beginning. The Magi had been half of his master plan, half of their team, half of _him, _and now he was somewhere that Hakuryuu could never reach him again. What was he supposed to do now? Just lie down in the dirt like a beaten, dying dog - like _Alibaba _\- and accept defeat? No...No, he could never do that!

_But what else can I do...?_

He had never wanted to cry out in grief any more than he did right now, but for once he couldn't have managed more than a whisper if he tried. The silent plea running through his head, though, seemed louder to him than any scream could be.

_Judal...Judal..._

**~0~**

**A/N - This little plot bunny barged into my head after chapter 260 and refused to leave until I wrote it. The dialogue taken from that chapter belongs to Ohtaka Shinobu, not me. Now someone get that dumb trashcan safe back out of space before he gets run down by the Space Core.**


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